Brazil 4
Go through the bookshop inside Cidade Matarazzo, adjacent to Rosewood Sao Paulo, and you can enter a unique art space which hosts pop-ups lasting about three months each.
The enthusiastic young people working in this art space, by the way, are all dressed in fuchsia pink boiler suits. Very attractive and they stand out in face of all the nothing-but-living-greenery in the whole 2.7 hectare complex. The current show features Es Devlin, a late 50s Brit, who’s a scene designer. She does stage sets for mega shows of the caliber of Adele.
Here, you’ve no idea what you’re going to be in for. First, about 20 people at a time are let into a cube of a room. about eight by eight by eight metres. The walls are lined with real books, floor to ceiling, and after a sound and light show explaining the relevance of protecting the planet, two of the bookshelves swing open and you find you’re in a three-dimensional mirrored maze, see above.
The maze must be three floors high, and again, it’s a gigantic cube, even larger. The installation includes curving staircases to get from one level or one half level to another. The staircases and some other edges are lined in colourless neon lights.
The whole effect is electrifying, and of course anybody wearing bright colours, say fuchsia pink, stands out immediately. It’s a hall of mirrors, only more so: at one stage, there’s a side room to which you can escape, and here there’s a whimsical panorama. of drawings of animals and butterflies. See below. It seems to stretch to eternity.
With suitable, sombre electronic music, back into the maze you go. How to get out? It’s just beginning to become claustrophobic. When you do find the way out and you’re back in the bookshop, was this all a dream?…
